DOJ And FTC Issue Vertical Merger Guidelines

On June 30 the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued their long-awaited Vertical Merger Guidelines. The final Guidelines come almost six months after the DOJ and FTC issued the guidelines in draft form.¹ They reflect a number of changes from the previously-issued draft that respond in part to critiques of the draft from FTC Commissioners Rebecca Slaughter and Rohit Chopra and to the more than seventy comments submitted on the draft. Despite the changes to address some of the concerns of the dissenting Commissioners, Commissioners Slaughter and Chopra each again dissented from the final Guidelines.

The purpose of the Guidelines is to "outline the principal analytical techniques, practices, and enforcement policies" of the DOJ and FTC.² They supersede the 1984 Non-Horizontal Merger Guidelines (originally issued in 1984 to address both vertical and horizontal mergers), which have not reflected the actual analysis applied to